


Negative Spaces

by LadySilver



Series: Weight of the World [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst Bingo, Gen, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not just about finding a place to sit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Spaces

Boyd was used to the way his presence changed the space around him.

He knew how his classmates would take an extra step back when he walked down the hall and and how they would scoot their desks a few inches further away when he sat down. He wasn’t ignorant of the way people turned away when he approached or the way their conversations cut off when they realized he could hear. He knew it wasn’t right, and some days he allowed himself to feel the anger that simmered.

Mostly, he didn’t bother.

His first growth spurt in seventh grade had left him towering over his classmates and had cursed him with the power to cause fear by existing. Eventually, he got used to how it was. He couldn’t shrink, couldn’t lose his natural girth, couldn’t lighten his skin. Wouldn’t, anyway.

It was a different blow that tore at his soul and it came with the simple act of eating lunch. Every day he gathered his cafeteria tray, and swept his eyes over the rapidly filling tables in painful hope that there’d be a space for him. Without fail, he saw pairs and groups of people sitting down together without anyone first asking “Can I sit here?” He saw hands waving in the air as someone who was never him was summoned to a saved seat.

He saw the division of tables: the computer nerds with their laptops out and headphones in, the drama geeks with their black t-shirts and trench coats, the popular kids with their sneers and attitude coronas. The jocks owned adjacent tables where they mock wrestled and tossed food around like none of them had ever gone to bed hungry.

No one saw him.

Inevitably, his breath rushed out of him and his shoulders sagged. “You need to put yourself out there,” his mama said, each time he tried to tell her how it was. “Once they get to know you….”

His mama was wrong.

When he put himself out there, everyone at the table always and simultaneously had someplace else to be.

God’s gifts to him hadn’t included coordination or speed; computer games bored him in their pointlessness; and he’d never thought much of reciting lines that others had written. He was reminded with every set of eyes that tracked him to make sure he kept right on walking that what he liked, what he had to offer wasn’t enough.

By unspoken assignment, he had been relegated to his own, empty table. He would sit with his back to the wall and stare out at the room where backpacks perched on seats between people who were friendly enough when he was handing them ice-skates.

Every morning, the anticipation of lunchtime twisted up his stomach and tightened his fists until his fingernails dug into his palms, yet he was never quite able to remember how bad it really was until he was here again, breathless and eyes stinging, his sense of space becoming ever more distorted.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Angst Bingo prompt: exile


End file.
